Labrador City

Nice day again the next morning. You can imagine a local checking, keys, wallet, mesh hat as he nips out for a paper.

I called the town office to check on the tours, but the morning one had been cancelled, so the earliest was 1.30pm. That was leaving it later than I'd like to head for Labrador City, so I decided to miss the tour. That was a shame as I was looking forward to it. The restaurant had pictures of these huge rooms, half a mile across with one small desk in it, sort of like a Bond film.

When I went down to check out the receptionist, said be careful on the road. Now people have been telling me that for all of the trip so far, but I knew this was different. I quickly went through the do I want to know argument in my head, but figured it could be a bad section of the road, so I had better be prepared.

A motorcyclist had died the previous day heading into Churchill Falls from the west, so the road I would be riding in the opposite direction today. Thankfully he only said it was about an hour out of town rather than giving me a distance, as at my relative speed an hour could be 40kms different from his and I really didn't want to be looking for an accident site.

As he explained it, there was a lorry nearby, so the clouds of dust reduced visibility, but I wasn't sure if the there was impact with the truck or not. He did mention a cyclist was there, and I'd seen the cyclist the previous day as I was unloading my bike, but he'd gone in the evening. When I went downstairs the cyclist was working on his bike in the big hall in the large building. I asked him if he'd seen the accident, and he told me he'd been involved. He also mentioned the truck, but said the first he knew of it, the motorbike had hit him from behind, he fell left onto the road, and the motorbike with rider, went right off the road. The rider went over the bars and hit the only pile of rocks for 100 metres in any direction. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The cyclist was shaken up and bruised, his bike had damage, so he was hoping to hitch to Goose Bay and rest up for a week. He was heading back to Ohio where his parents lived of the course of the next few months.

I noticed that I was much slower that day. The road probably wasn't as bad as the day before, but I couldn't get the crash out of my head. It's not really worth speculating on how it happened, but I couldn't stop thinking that it was rider error.

The picture of the road I took that day during my only fuel stop. You can see the grooves again, the heavy area of stones on the right hand side, and the horrible camber of the road. Once you get into that loose stuff it's hard to get back out.

You don't really have a lot of time to look at the scenery as you have to concentrate on the road, but when you stop, or when you can grab a second, it is very nice up here. Lots of trees, lakes and such stretching off as far as the eye can see.

I knew that the tarmac was extending out from Labrador City to Churchill Falls, but I didn't know how far, so I was very pleasantly surprised when it began about 90kms from the town. There was a McDonalds at a junction, so I'd pulled in to use their free wifi so I could find my motel, that I'd booked in advance this time, only to realise that it was next door.

Labrador City has always been dominated by the mines nearby, but it's going through a boom at the moment, so rooms are hard to get without booking in advance, and it seems that every other vehicle is a pickup with an orange flag on it. I guess it makes them more visible to the huge trucks on the mines. 

It was nice to have a Tim Hortons again and a Subway, but odd to see that they were open 24 hours out here. The mines must run all night.

 No real point to this picture other than I thought Jubbers was a cool name. As ever pickups with flags abound.

There were quite a few bikes running around too, very clean Harleys and some sportsbikes thrashing around, not indicating, or indicating the wrong way. They were like angry insects buzzing around on this little tarmac island.

This bike was in the motel parking lot the next morning. It's also from Ontario, and has a second set of tyres next to it. The knobblies are on it now and the road tyres stacked next to them, so I don't know if they are about to be fitted or have just been taken off.

That's the Trans Labrador Highway pretty much complete, as it's tarmac to the border with Quebec nearby, but there is still 150 miles or so of gravel to do tomorrow including a section that I've been told is one of the worst.